Movie review: Rise of the Guardians

There's plenty of eye candy in Rise of the Guardians, but not much meat.

Photograph by: Paramount Pictures
, Postmedia News

Starring: Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Chris Pine, Jude Law

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Festooned with bright pixels and secular bells, Rise of the Guardians may look like another salute to the consumerism of the season, but this story of Jack Frost’s transformation from mischievous prankster to spiritual guardian of all children across the globe is going for something much bigger than a pretty package.

Peter Ramsey’s animated adaptation of William Joyce’s book is genuinely seeking to inspire and enlighten the kids who will gather around its theatrical apron by teaching the beauty and deep meaning of altruism.

Sharing several similarities with the man who gives Christmas its name, Jack Frost (Chris Pine) has a lot of human characteristics, but oddly supernatural abilities. When he emerges into our world over a frozen pond in the opening frames, he discovers he can freeze water, breathe hoary streaks across glass and essentially affect the destiny of humankind.

He’s giddy over his power, but he feels empty deep inside. No one can see Jack. He has no contact with anyone remotely like him, and he feels a profound sense of alienation as he lives in his perpetually frozen universe.

All that changes when a dark force begins to stir, threatening everything from Christmas to Easter, the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy, to the very matter of faith itself.

Jack is enlisted to join a movement called The Guardians by none other than a Slavic Santa Claus called North (Alec Baldwin) and a giant egg-toting mascot named Bunny (Hugh Jackman).

Reluctant to wrap himself in any cultlike organization, regardless of their good intentions, Jack tries to elude the idea that he’s responsible for so many others and tries to decline.

The Guardians appeal to his humanity and attempt to explain what’s happening: The Sandman has been usurped by the dark prince Pitch (Jude Law) ensuring every sweet dream has been turned into a shivering night terror.

The children of the world are sleepless and fearful, and one by one, the little lights of belief are starting to dim, taking the health and welfare of every holiday mascot down with every little broken heart.

Jack thinks the burly heroes have everything well in hand without him, but as the situation grows dire, frosty Jack begins to thaw.

He doesn’t exactly take a long walk in the desert, but he moves through a parallel landscape as he questions his semi-earthly purpose.

Whether Jack will prove capable of taking action is the underlying emotional engine, but the good versus evil battle takes up the majority of the screen time as Ramsey surrenders to blistering action sequences and retina-rotting eye candy.

This is a common ill in these days of unlimited visualizing, where filmmakers forget they have to sell the emotion more than the optics if they really want to move people — and Ramsey clearly does.

The movie balances on this grand moral fulcrum of personal responsibility and self-sacrifice, yet to really get there we have to go much deeper than a breathless action sequence, a clever joke or a cute creature.

We have to pierce the sacred heart of faith, and this movie doesn’t have a fine enough point to penetrate its own shiny veneer.

Lost in a dizzying sea of images that will no doubt dazzle the senses, the viewer will cling to the handful of scenes where we’re treated to dramatic dialogue and character development — because they’re surprisingly solid.

Thanks to Baldwin and Jackman, who each offer a novel vocal spin on these familiar characters, the movie finds enough freshness to remain interesting and frequently, it’s very funny.

After all, what’s not funny about a Santa tattooed like a Russian convict, an Easter Bunny who talks like Crocodile Dundee, or a Tooth Fairy who doesn’t understand why collecting teeth could ever be creepy?

The writing is smart and cleverly aware as it tries to collapse Christian myth into cartoon dimensions without ever uttering a word about God, Jesus or the origin of Christmas.

The only thing it forgot to do is make us care.

Without developing the relationships between the characters through smaller human moments, it’s hard not to feel pummeled by the frantic bouts of fantasy — and just a little hungry for something more.

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